Call him “the Architect” or “Bush’s Brain,” but former presidential advisor Karl Rove had plenty to say in Lafayette today — about the RNC’s latest scandal, and California’s electoral landscape this year.

First, Rove on the near-$2000 reimbursement to Orange County GOP operative Erik Brown to pay for a “Young Eagles” fundraiser at the now-infamous West Hollywood lesbian/bondage-themed strip club called “Voyeur.” He said he’s called for the RNC staffer responsible for that repayment to be fired; Allison Meyers, the “Young Eagles” director, was indeed — on Monday.

But in addition to our story on Rove on SFGate.com tonight, check out our own Shaky Hands Productions capturing his take on whole mess — and what appears to be a lukewarm endorsement of the leadership of RNC chair Michael Steele through the whole thing:

Rove, speaking to a sell-out crowd sponsored by the Contra Costa County Republican Party and state GOP vice chair Tom Del Beccaro, had this to say on Bush: “We did a helluva lot more than we get credit for — and we did the country right for eight years.” Rove, the author of the new book “Courage and Consequence: My Life in the Conservative Fight,” said Bush is writing his own soon-to-be-published book. “He wanted to give a decent interval to the new president….and he recognizes when his book comes out in November, that that’s going to be the end of the period of quiet,” he said.

“He’s going to talk about how he arrived at these decisions….(but) “he is happy that (former vice president Dick) Cheney’s out there to set the record straight.”

Other topics:

*On California politics, Rove said that GOP has a “delicious opportunity” to take out Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer this year, saying: “Here’s a woman who has been in 18 years, who consistently polls under 50 percent….just slightly above opponents who are not well-defined or well known,” he said. “That is not a good place for an incumbent to be.”

*On former two term governor Jerry Brown: Rove also warned that Republicans should not underestimate Democratic gubernatorial candidate, saying that “the thing that…makes him so unusual is that he has stayed so actively involved and reinvented himself.”

But he argued that “I don’t think he has the temper for the state of California today. This is going to require somebody to get in and make some very tough decisions that are going to keep the state from going over the cliff — or not…and it strikes me that he’s just too much of the last 40 years of political history to be a fresh new face.”

*On the political purity of two GOP gubernatorial candidates — former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who endorsed Boxer in 2004 and State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who wrote a check to Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000, Rove shrugged — “That’s California.”